IlIBRARY OFrONGfiESS.I 

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f UNITliD STATKS OP AMhiilCA.f 



RECONSTRUCTION. 



SPEECH 




HON. WILLIAM A. NEWELL, OF NEW JERSEY, 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 15, 1866. 



V 



Tho House having under consideration the Pres- 
ident's mcssafcc, as in Committee of the Whole on 
tho state of the Union — 

Mr. STROUSE having obtained the floor, 
said : Mr. Speaker, 1 am not quite ready to com- 
mence my speech, and as I understand the gen- 
tleman from New Jersey [Mr. Newell] desires 
to address the House, 1 will give way to him if 
he will promise not to occupy more than half 
an hour of my time. 

Mr. NEWELL. I have made so many inef- 
fectual efforts to obtain the floor that I shall 
gladly avail myself of the courtesy of the gen- 
tleman from Pennsylvania, and assure him that 
I will not infringe upon his kindness — an ar- 
rangement which will be, perhaps, agreeable to 
me, as my voice is quite hoarse — and will, with 
the permission of the House, incorporate in my 
printed speech such portions of it as I may not 
be able to concentrate in the limited time to 
which I am confined. 

Mr. Speaker, I propose to submit some re- 
marks upon the annual message of the Pres- 
ident of the United States. 

I may premise that my acquaintance with the 
President extends back nearly twenty years, 
when associated with him as a member of this 
body. We sat upon opposite sides of this 
Chamber, and seldom voted together ; but I 
honored him and all his associates honored 
him as the advocate of progress, the friend of 
humanity, the able and uncompromising cham- 
pion of the right of man to the fruits of his 
labor, and to the possession of so much of the 
unoccupied public domain as that labor could 
cultivate. 1 knew and honored him as the 
defender of all those rights which underlie the 
Declaration of Independence as living princi- 
ples, pregnant with a meaning and an interpre- 
tation which he has lived to see accorded to 
them by many who in that day professed to 
regard them only as "glittering generalities." 



I have known him since that time as faithful 
among the faithless in the desperate ordeal 
through which we have passed, giving unmis- 
takable testimony of fealty to the cause of 
liberty and the Union. Persecuted, defamed, 
plundered, driven from his home and family, 
hunted like a beast of prey, he upheld the cause 
of his country and bade defiance to the armed 
legions of treason and death. For all these 
the Union party elevated him to the place he 
occupies. For all these he has my confidence 
to-day, and I do not believe, as many would 
have us believe, that he will prove unfaithful 
to the great trust confided to his keeping. He 
may ditfer from Congress as to the particular 
method of reconstructing the Union ; but I 
appeal_ to the debates and actions of the Senate 
and this House, as well as to the people and 
press of the country, and ask if there is una- 
nimity anywhere on this most important matter. 
On the great questions of the preservation of 
the Government and the freedom and elevation 
of mankind he is eminently sound and consist- 
ent. There is no material difference on vital 
points between him'and ourselves; none that 
may not be speedily adjusted by conference and 
conciliation. To denounce him as a traitor 
who, hand to hand, has throttled treason to the 
death ; to brand him as a usurper whose whole 
energies have been devoted to the welfare and 
improvement of his race is to utter a malignant 
libel upon mankind. Sir, having so well ful- 
filled the varied duties of his life, let us not 
reproach and distrust him without cause, but 
rather sustain him in all just and reasonable 
measures, and leave the result to Him who 
guides the destinies of nations. 

There are many subjects, Mr. Speaker, in 
the excellent message before us to which I 
would like to advert, but time will not permit, 
and I shall therefore confine myremarks to the 
question which so properly engrosses so large a 






share of our attention as well as that of the whole 
country — the reconstruction of the Union/ 

The nature and character of the Government 
are such as to constitute it an anomaly in the 
family of nations. It represents the solidarity 
of the States combined with an individuality 
of each as respects all matters and powers 
not delegated to the General Government, 
which leaves it perfectly free and untrammeled 
in its appropriate sphere. It represents, in 
fact, in a community of nations that freedom 
of action which in a community of people is 
compatible with the greatest good of the body 
politic. As the latter is the highest type of 
individual existence in the social state, so the 
former is the most perfect representative of a 
community of nations having one paramount ob- 
ject and principle, namely, the greatest amount 
of individual national liberty compatible with 
the collective national security. It was evi- 
dently foi-eseen by the fathers of the Constitu- 
tion that it behooved them to restrain on the 
one hand a too great latitude of individual State 
authority and action, and on the other a too 
great concentration of national power. Thus 
the Constitution gave to the States collectively 
the right to make war or declare peace ; to 
impose taxes on imports ; to create and main- 
tain a standing Army and Navy ; to dispose of 
the public lands ; to regulate commerce be- 
tween the States ; to naturalize foreigners ; to 
accredit to and receive embassadors from for- 
eign Powers ; and to do certain other acts 
specified in the Constitution. To the States 
were left certain rights, powers, and duties, 
principally pertaining to local government, and 
having reference to matters which it was ac- 
knowleged they were better capable of super- 
vising and regulating. The Constitution seeks 
to make the States sovereign in their sphere of 
duties and the national Government supreme 
in its sphere. In carrying out these ideas the 
framers found a difficult and delicate task. 

From the organization of the Government to 
the present day it has been a subject of debate 
and discussion at all periods, giving rise, more 
or less, to bitter partisan strife and sectional 
animosity, which finally culminated in the late 
gigantic rebellion against the authority of the 
national Government and the Union of the States 
composing it. And in this connection I might 
add that history has been repeating itself in the 
case of that of our own country. The party 
strifes and revolutions, the contest for power in 
all nations, have been produced by the collisions 
of those who would strengthen the central 
power on the one hand, and those who would 
weaken it on the other. The history of Rome, 
from the earliest period to the time when power 
was almost entirely concentrated in the person 
of the emperors, is nothing but the record of 
such a contest, which had its beginning in the 
birth of the nation, its culmination in the pe- 
riod of its highest prosperity, audits end in its 



era of decay and dissolution. The aim of the 
fathers was to preserve such a happy mean be- 
tween the concentration and diffusion of power 
that this contest should be reduced to its min- 
imum of virulence, and that thus those violent 
collisions, political and revolutionary, which 
had marked the history of the world from the 
earliest period, should be so mitigated as not to 
endanger national safety and individual free- 
dom. The combined wisdom of these patriotic 
men produced our present Constitution. It is 
a noble monument to their ability ; but, unfor- 
tunately, "like all human instruments, it was 
imperfectly constructed, not because the theory 
was wrong, but because of the existence in the j 
country of an institution so contrary to the 'j 
genius of free government, and to the very ' 

principles upon which the Constitution itself 
was founded, that it was impossible to incor- 
porate it into the organic law so that the latter 
could be preserved free from its contaminating 
influence. It was as if the surgeon were to 
innoculate the living healthy body with the virus 
of a loathsome disease. The result would cer- 
tainly be that a contest for dominion between 
health and disease would be produced, in which 
life or death would eventually triumph. 

The framers of the Constitution did what 
they considered best under the circumstances. 
They made freedom the rule and slavery the 
excejition in the organization of the Govern- 
ment. They declared in favor of the former 
in language the most emphatic and sublime in i 

history, while they placed the latter, as they | 

fondly hoped, in a position favorable for ulti- i 

mate extinction. Indeed, they so worded the 
organic act itself that slavery was decided to be 
so abhorrent to the sentiment of justice, liberty, 
and common humanity as to render it utterly 
unworthy to be named therein. I have before 
said that the fathers intended to organize a 
Government in which freedom should be the 
rule and slavery the exception. The whole 
drift of their action was toward such a consum- 
mation ; and for years the tendency of the so- 
cial life and industry of the people was to the 
same end. State after State abolished slavery, J 
until finally the free predominated over the slave 1 
States in numbers and population. Slavery was 
driven taward a particular section of the coun- 
try, where the cultivation of the cotton plant 
rendered it so profitable and at the same time 
constituted it such a monopoly in the hands of 
a few powerful, wealthy, talented, and a-aibi- 
tious men as to make it an element of political 
power and engine of ambitious designs so as to 
render its existence incompatible with individ- 
ual liberty and national safety. Indeed, in such 
gigantic proportions did this institution loom 
up on the political horizon that the declaration, 
"this country cannot exist half slave and half 
free," burst from the lips of two of our leading 
statesmen as if forced from them in the agony 
produced by a contemplation of our political 



future. But it was not so much these men as 
the good men and true of the country speaking 
tlirough thera wlio uttered at tliat time words 
wliich were i^rophetic of the consummation 
which was so near at hand that for the first 
time prophecy blended itself with history. Yes, 
for the first time in the history of the world the 
prophet be(/ame the chief actor in the events 
wliich he foretold, even to the extent of scaling 
^•with his life the book which, under the direc- 
tion of an overruling Providence, he was se- 
lected to open. 

Thus, instead, as the fathers intended, of free- 
dom being the rule and slaverj' the exception, 
on account of the encroachments of this insti- 
tution, and the ambitious designs of those who 
used it as an engine of political power, there 
was danger that slaverj- would become the rule 
and freedom the exception. It aspired to make 
every department of the Government subserv- 
ient to itself and its interests. It poisoned 
also the social life of the jjeople, undermined 
their belief in self-government, weakened their 
faith in the principle on which the Government 
was founded, the principle of universal suffrage ; 
in fine, it had so succeeded in debauching the 
conscience of a large mass of the people as to 
render them fit tools in the hands of men who 
were determined that slavery should rule the 
country or that they would dissolve the Union. 

And so this Constitution of our fathers, be- 
cause of the existence of an element foreign 
to its genius and principles, flatly subversive of 
the ideas on which it was founded, and which 
gave the lie direct to its declaration of riglits, 
was in such danger of utter destruction that 
the patriotic people of the nation found them- 
selves compelled to abandon it altogether as 
the osgis of their liberty and safety or take up 
arms in its defense. This latter alternative 
was taken, and the result was that the contest 
60 long waged between individual State libei-ty 
and national security was finally and forever 
decided by the ultima ratio of nations and of 
war. 

For years the contest between the doctrines 
represented by Thomas Jefferson on the one 
hand, and Alexander Hamilton on the other, 
convulsed the countiy. The State-rights men 
demanded one concession after another in favor 
of slavery. It was at one time the right to cap- 
ture and to aid in capture ; at another, the right 
to carry into Territories; at another, the right 
of passage through and domicil in the States ; 
at another, the principle that the Constitution 
carried it everywhere, and at all times; and 
finally, the culminating right, that of secession 
from the Union in order to build up a confed- 
eration of which it was to be tlie chief corner- 
stone. Jefferson's idea of State rights was sim- 
ply the conservation of individual and State 
rights. The idea of the latter-day pretended 
followers of Jefferson was that State rights was 
the liberty given to one man to oppress his fel- 



low, and that no power, not even the central 
authority itself, could intervene to shield the 
oppressed. This was the degeneration of a 
great principle of individual liberty, subordi- 
nated to social welfare, to the principle of the 
pirate or the robber who regards no law but 
brute force. And such a degeneration only 
showed that State rights, as understood by these 
bad men, had passed outside and beyond the 
pale of civilization itself, and thus became 
inimical not only to the people, but actually 
menaced the national unity. 

But, indeed, when the national authority found 
itself unable to protect the liberties of the peo- 
ple, it not only failed in the first principles of 
its organization, but degenerated into an instru- 
ment of oppression. The form of the original 
instrument, it is true, remained, but under tho 
.modern interpretation of the principle of State 
rights the soul which had originally animated 
it had long since departed. So that the con- 
test between the so-called advocates of State 
rights, which had convulsed the nation more or 
less from its foundation, culminated in armed 
rebellion against the central authority, leaving 
the friends of a Government founded on the 
natural rights of a people and universal justice 
no other alternative but to defend with the 
sword that which they had so long and so nobly 
contended for with the tongue and pen. I con- 
sequently, then, regard this contest as much 
closed by the late war as that which for years 
preceded the Kevoluhon was closed by the tii- 
umph of our arms at that period. As the coun- 
try entered upon a new era at the close of the 
Revolution, so it enters upon a new era now. 
The Revolution settled the great principle that 
representation should follow taxation, and that 
so far as all men in these United States were 
concerned, this principle was true in theory 
but not in practice, and this because slavery 
existed as a disturbing element at that time. 
The result of the rebellion has made this prin- 
ciple for which the fathers fought not only 
true in theory but true in practice. The rebel- 
lion commenced in a desire either to destroy 
this Union or to decide that the principle for 
which the fathers fought for was applicable 
only to white men. It ended in the defeat and 
disgrace of the men who upheld and fought for 
this principle and the triumph of those who 
opposed it. During the contest, and while it 
was yet in doubt, it was found necessary to 
make the principles of the Declaration of In- 
dependence and of the Constitution practically 
as well as theoretically true by the elevation of 
the exceptional race to the status of free citi- 
zens. This was done, and the race was called 
upon to aid in the struggle, and they nobly re- 
sponded to the appeal. They not only helped 
to win their own liberty, but aided to preserve 
ours. 

The result of the rebellion, then, having made 
the principles of the Constitution not only the- 



oretically but practically true, it is our duty to 
see that the principles of the Constitution are 
now carried out to the fullest extent of the idea 
of the framers; to have them carried out so as 
to embrace "all men" as truly as the fathers 
embraced them ideally, and would have era- 
braced them truly but for the existence of sla- 
very at that time. In doing this the country 
takes a new departure in the course toward the 
goal of universal freedom, and with the noble 
motto, "Equal and exact justice to all men," 
inscribed upon its escutcheon, stands forth, in 
the presence of all nations, thoroughly purged 
from every impurity. Founded upon the rock 
of true republicanism, "universal sutfrage," in 
the ages to come the waves of death and dark- 
ness may beat against it, but shall beat in vain. 
From the very nature of republicanism, as 
understood by the fathers, freedom and suffrage 
are concomitant, t^vin sisters, inseparable, mu- 
tually dependent on each other for support and 
existence. Suffrage follows freedom as light 
follows the rising of the sun. It is by the ballot- 
box that freedom is upheld and perpetuated. 
Take away that sacred right of republican gov- 
ernment, and you leave the people no means 
for the redress of grievances but those of revo- 
lution. You compel those who are denied this 
right to resort to force in order to obtain them. 
Indeed, universal suffrage is to such an extent 
the distinguishing feature of republican insti- 
tutions that our people, from the highest to the 
lowest, our statesmen, our judges, and our jour- 
nalists, have continually justified revolution in 
any nation of the Old World in which the right 
of suffrage is either denied to the great mass of 
the people or so abridged as to be practically 
a nullity. During the well-known Dorr rebel- 
lion of Rhode Island, indeed, I well remember 
that the Democratic journals of the country, 
almost without exception, justified the rebels 
on the ground that the constitution and laws of 
that State left the majority of the people no other 
alternative save revolution, because it denied the 
right of suffrage. Now, how can we stand up 
in the presence of the despotisms of the Old 
World and justify their oppressed peoplefor 
waging war against a tyranny which exists in a 
more offensive and oppressive manner among^ 
ourselves? In most of the despotic nations of 
the globe a man may, by acquiring property, by 

Eerforming some signal service to the State, or 
y some other means, place himself in the gov- 
erning class; but in the United States, under 
our Constitution, as interpreted by certain pol- 
iticians and statesmen, a large class of the people 
are forever excluded from the rights of freemen, 
from ever becoming a part and parcel of the peo- 
ple of the United States. J udge Taney, in the 
celebrated Dred Scott case, declares that no 
State has a right to make a citizen of the Uni- 
ted States: 

"The Constitution, upon its adoption, obviously 
took from the States all power, by any subsequent 



legislation, to introduce as a citizen into the political 
family of the United States any one, no matter where 
he was born, or what might be his character or con- 
dition." 

Now, the question ai-ises, what constitutes 
the political family of the United States? Why, 
certainly thoseborn to the soil; those who pay 
taxes for the support of the Govei^nnent ; those 
who are called upon to bear arms in its defense 
against insurrection at home and against the 
public enemy abroad. Every man, then, who 
is not an alien who refuses allegiance to the 
Government comes under this category; and 
to the extent that you abridge or deny the right 
of citizenship, to that extent you \'iolate the 
principles of the Constitution of the United 
States and the Declaration of Independence, 
which are based on those principles. Demo- 
cratic interpreters of the Constitution claim 
that a State may make or unmake a citizen of 
the United States, and limit or deny him the 
suffrage. I deny this. A State may regulate 
and control the suffrage so as to prevent frauds, 
and for the convenience of voting, but it can- 
not take from one citizen of the United States 
within its borders that which it allows to an- 
other. Again I quote from Judge Taney's 
opinion in the Dred Scott case. He says : 

" And if persons of the African race are citizens of 
a State and of the United States they would be en- 
titled to all of those privileges and immunities in every 
State, and the State could not restrict them, for they 
would hold these privileges and immunities under 
the paramount authority of the FcderaKrovernment; 
and its courts would be bound to maintain and enforce 
them, the constitution and thehiwsof the State to the 
contrary notwithstanding. And if the States could 
limit or restrict them, or place the party in an inferior 
grade, this clause of the Constitution would be un- 
meaning, and could have no operation, and would 
give no rights to the citizen when in another State. 
lie would have none but what the State itself chose 
to allow him." 

Now, Mr. Speaker, admitting, for the sake 
of the argument, that at the time of the adoption 
of the Constitution, as Judge Taney claimed, 
the African was enslaved and subject, at the 
present day this is not the case. There is in 
this country now no subject or enslaved race. 
No foot of a slave or subject pollutes our soil. 
We are sovereign people. The constitutional 
amendment has elevated all tlie people into 
what? Is it into a distinct class, separate and 
defined by metes and bounds, or is it into the 
only class we or the Constitution recognize — 
the" people of the United States? Certainly it 
is the latter class, and if it is, then they are citi- 
zens of the United States, possessing all the 
rights and immunities of such. Again I quote 
Judge Taney, who says : 

"The words 'people of the United States' and 
'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the s.ome 
thing." 

But he also says that no State can restrict 
the privileges and immunities of a citizen of 
the United States. I have shown that among 
those privileges and immunities the right of 
suffrage is the most sacred of all. It is, in 



fact, the ark of the covenant that overshad- 
ows, covers, and protects with its sacred wings 
every other right, civil as well as political. 
Take it away, and you take away the power 
of conserving and protecting all tlic rest. I 
cannot conclude but that freedom and suffrage 
are inseparable in our political system, just as 
people and citizens are synonymous terms in 
our Constitution. Every attribute of a truly 
republican government confirms this, and every 
departure from this principle testifies to our 
want of faith in the ability of the people to be 
sovereigns, and of a growing belief in the doc- 
trine that the government of the select few, is 
more preferable and more in accordance with 
right, justice, and humanity than the govern- 
ment of the entire mass. Because, and only 
because, the African peojile were an enslaved 
and subject race at the time of the adoption of 
the Constitution, they had no right that the 
white man was bound to respect. The emanci- 
pation proclamation has removed the badge of 
ser\-itude from off their necks, but does not in 
any word limit, the freedom into which they have 
been introduced. On the contrary, it is pro- 
vided that Congress shall have the power to 
carry out that freedom to the fullest extent. 
The old Roman acts of emancipation, pre\*ious 
to the period of imperial rule, limited the status 
of freedmen. The emperors abolished that 
limit, and the freedman when emancipated be- 
came at once a citizen. Our act of emancipa- 
tion neither limits nor defines the status of the 
freedman. It elevates him at once into the 
ranks of the people. It casts him into the great 
mass with all disabilities removed and all po- 
litical and civil rights granted him. The State 
that dares to limit or abridge or deprive him 
altogether of those rights, violates the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and in so doing 
commits a high crime against the authority of 
that instrument as well as against the sover- 
eignty of the people. 

It may not be wise to extend this high pre- 
rogative of a citizen, the elective franchise, to 
that large class of people who have so recently 
become free ; indeed, I fully agree with those 
who claim that it would be best to v/ithhold it 
until they become more accustomed to think 
and act for themselves, and attain a degree of 
knowledge and intelligence necessary to a pro- 

Ser appreciation of that attribute of citizenship. 
;ut I see no way of escape from the force of 
truth and inevitable logic of the conaiusion that 
freedom and citizenship carry with them, pari 
pa.'isn. the right of suflf'rage. 

I have endeavored to show, Mr. Speaker, 
that in the foundation of the Government the 
people of all the States agreed that, in order to 
a more perfect Union for the sake of ourselves 
and our posterity, the States should give up cer- 
tain rights that would otherwise Inhere in them 
to the United States or new nation about to be 
formed. Among these rights were virtually 



the inherent rights of sovereignty, namely, the 
right to make war and declare peace, the right 
of citizenship to the extent that said citizen- 
ship should be uniform throughout the Union 
and regulated by Congress. Thus the right of 
naturalization was declared to be a right of the 
new nation, while all the people of the United 
States were declared to be citizens thereof; 
and thus the citizens of any one State in the 
Union were given "the right to enter every 
State whenever they pleased," I again quote 
from Judge Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott 
case, "singly or in companies, without pass or 
passport and without obstruction, to sojourn 
there as long as they pleased, to go where they 
pleased at every hour of the day or night, with- 
out molestation, unless they committed some 
violation of the law." In fact, the Confederacy 
was changed into a great nation based upon the 
will of the whole people, and suljject to such 
laws as would conser\'e the general weal. Cer- 
tain modes of procedure were also laid down 
for altering or amending the Constitution, but 
nowhere do we iind provision made for the 
secession of a State from the national Confed- 
eration ; on the contrary, the idea of the fram- 
ers evidently was, that as national unity was 
necessary to national safety and individual lib- 
erty, so every possible means was taken to 
preserve that unity for themselves and their 
posterity. The Constitution declares that Con- 
gress shall guaranty to every State a republican 
form of government. Now, suppose the major- 
ity in any one State decide in favor of a mo- 
narchical or despotic government, this Is practi- 
cally carrying out the right of secession, for 
such a government is incompatible with the 
Union of these States. In view of the forma- 
tion of such a government, the minority in that 
State could appeal to the Congress of the Uni- 
ted States for protection, and Congress would 
be compelled to Intervene In order to vindicate 
the Constitution of the United States and_ the 
principle of universal suffrage on which it is 
founded. The duty devolving upon the United 
States of guarantying a republican government 
to the citizens of every State is one of the 
strongest evidences that the secession of a State 
was never contemplated by the fathers ; but, on 
the contrary, the paramountduty of the Govern- 
ment was to preserve the liberty of the citizen, 
whether menaced by insurrection or despotism 
by the States or any confederation of them, or 
by any enemy from abroad. 

Indeed, thecontlngencywhichrendered inter- 
vention necessary to preserve the liberty of the 
people has occurred In our day, and was caused 
not by any despotic act of the central author- 
ity itself, but by the ditempt of an oligarchy 
based on* the right of man to hold property 
in man, through the perversion of the doctrine 
of State rights, to trample on the liberties of 
the people and extinguish them forever under 
the worst despotism In all the annals of history. 



6 



The right of a State to secede, then, is found to 
be incomi^atible with the principle of universal 
suffrage, and the fathers seeing that it might, 
and no doubt would, endanger it, so worded 
the organic act as to decree a perpetual Union 
for the purpose of perpetuating liberty with it. 
Liberty and union, one and inseparable, was 
inscribed on their banner ; and their sons dur- 
ing the late rebellion have held it aloft amid 
scenes of blood and carnage such as the world 
had never previously witnessed. Aftersuch a 
contest, and such a triumphant termination 
thereto, is it possible that any true patriot can 
for a moment doubt that the idea of the fathers 
transmitted to their children became in them 
an article of political faith, so deeply engraven 
in their hearts and consciences that all the 
demoniacal powers of a despotism could not 
prevail to undermine or destroy it? It was this 
faith that sustained us through the late bloody 
struggle against the enemies of human rights. 
It is this faith in liberty and union that will 
always prove a wall of fire against any similar 
assaults in the future. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the enemies of this Union 
and this liberty are still insidiously at work. 
They still talk of State rights and State sov- 
ereignty. But still, as before, with them State 
rights means the right of an oligarchy to de- 
prive the people of their liberties, to say that 
a citizen of the United States shall not be en- 
titled to the privileges and immunities of the 
citizens of each State. This is the real animus 
of State rights ; and secession means the deter- 
mination to enforce the dogma outside the pro- 
tecting tegis of the Constitution, if they cannot 
do so within. We respect Rome, because she 
protected her citizens in all the provinces of 
her vast dominion, even the most remote. Saul 
of Tarsus, though a Jew, appealed to her for 
protection from the lash, and his appeal was 
heard. We admire Great Britain, because she 
also protects her citizens, and allows no State 
to make exceptive laws discriminating^ against 
them. But are we to deny to an American cit- 
izen, one of the sovereign people of our free 
Government, that supreme right of protec- 
tion which despotic Governments are so care- 
ful to accord to their subjects or their slaves ? 
We do deny this supreme right to our citizens 
when we acknowledge that a State can secede 
from the Union and thus deprive its citizens of 
that support and protection, of those rights of 
sovereign citizenship, to confirm and preserve 
which the Union itself was formed, and formed 
for no other purpose. 

As regards the dogma of State suicide, so 
ably set forth by Mr. Stevens and others, I 
cannot indorse it con^stently with these views. 
A State may, by alteration or amdiidment of 
its organic act, place itself in a position that 
puts it without the pale of republican govern- 
ment. It still remains a State, however, sub- 
ject to the Constitution, and Congress is bound 



to see that the penalties, if not privileges, of 
that instrument are visited upon it. It thus 
remains a State for correction and amendment, 
in order that its citizens, who are at the same 
time citizens of the United States, may be pro- 
tected in fheir rights and privileges, at least 
that portion of them who continue true to their 
allegiance to the Constitution and the Union. 
The Constitution provides no way for the seces- 
sion of a State from the Union, and no State 
having been taken out by the war it is plain that 
these States lately in rebellion have never been 
out, and are consequently still in the Union. 
The question whether it is in or out, theoret-^ 
ically, is not so important as the questionof 
restoration, and that is the question with which 
we are now called upon to deal. It is a most 
important question, because that upon it de- 
pends the restoration and perpetuation of the 
Union. 

And in approaching this question the first 
consideration should be the fitness of the late 
so-called seceded States to renew their alle- 
giance to the Union. This fitness depends on, 
first, their loyalty to the Constitution ; secondly, 
their loyalty to human rights, the rights and 
privileges of every citizen thereof. As regards 
loyalty to the Union, we should be satisfied 
that they will repudiate all their debts incurred 
in the prosecution of the late war ; and on the 
other hand respect the debts contracted by us 
in putting down the rebellion. This would be 
such a practical exhibition of loyalty as to fully 
satisfy the Union man most doubtful as to the 
honesty of their future. True, this has virtually 
been repudiated by the collapse of the rebel- 
lion itself, but it remains a source ofalarm 
to our loyal people and an engine of mischief 
with which demagogues may yet play to the 
injury of the country and its institutions. 

Mr. Speaker, when the States lately in re- 
bellion shall send loyal Representatives here, 
and when I see evidences of a desire on the 
part of the people to do justly and love mercy, 
and to walk as becomes members of a Chris- 
tian republican commonweath, I shall rejoice 
to admit them to the full and perfect rights and 
privileges of which they have by their own 
folly been deprived. 

From some of the States lately in insurrec- 
tion members have been elected to this Con- 
gress against whom not even a suspicion of 
disloyalty can be breathed. On the contrary, 
they are noble and worthy men who have per- 
iled all, property, family connections, and life 
itself, in the cause of the Union. The States 
which they represent having fulfilled ^the con- 
ditions of admission understood by all to have 
been imposed upon them after the suppression 
of the rebellion, are entitled to representation 
by loyal men. I think in the cases of all of 
these States and of these loyal Representatives, 
the committee on reconstruction should report 
immediately and favorably. But at any rate, 



Mr. Speaker, the committee, having a proper 
sense of wliat is due to tbe intelligence, honor, 
and dignity of this House, should make a re- 
port setting forth its reasons for the exclusion 
of these States and their loyal Representatives. 
In that case we could act understandingly, and 
with all the lights on this subject before us. 
Such a report would also tend to greatly relieve 
the suspense and an.xiety under which the coun- 
try labors respecting the great question^ of re- 
construction and pacification of the Union. 

I admit that on account of ihe factious con- 
duct of the South, which, since the defeat of 
the great rebel armies in the field, has in many 
States been increasing rather than diminish- 
ing in virulence, a state of war virtually exists 
in the gi-eater portion of that section ; but in 
those States in which such a condition of things 
does not prevail, would it not bo well to admit 
members by districts upon proper scrutiny of 
liieir antecedents? Indeed, is not this a legal 
mode of admitting members to seats in this 
House? The States are represented in the 
Senate and the people in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, whose members are elected by dis- 
tricts. If a State is not or cannot be fully rep- 
resented, there is no reason that it should not 
be represented at all. Pennsylvania to-day is 
not fully represented, having but twenty-three 
instead of twenty-four members on this floor, in 
consequence of a contest for the representation 
in the sixteenth district. Because that district 
i^i not represented, shall we disfranchise the en- 
tire State? So it is with some of these States 
lately in rebellion. Take the case of Tennes- 
see. It has established a loyal government. 
It stands by the Union to-day as firmly and 
steadfastly as Maryland, Missouri, or Ken- 
tucky. Tennessee was admitted to a seat in the 
last national Union convention, and one of her 
sons was selected for the Vice Presidency, and 
I can see no reason why its loyal Representa- 
tives shall be excluded here. Shall we exclude 
tlie noble Maynard and others of his colleagues 
because one or more of the Representatives 
may present so disloyal a record as to prevent 
their admission? These are certainly ques- 
tions for the House to consider, and I respect- 
fully urge the committee on reconstruction to 
report upon them, so that we may take the 
necessary action in so important a matter. 

And while upon the subject of the reconstruc- 
tion and readmission of the States, permit me 
to say a few words regarding amendments to 
the Constitution. I am opposed to all unne- 
cessary and sweeping amendments of that in- 
strument. They have a tendency to subvert 
insidiously our form of government, and to beget 
a want of reverence for the Constitution, which 
will finally make it subject to the sport of every 
wind of doctrine and the object of demagogical 
assaults, the most dangerous not only to our 
liberty, but to the stability of the Government. 
I am especially opposed to the proposition to 



elect the President directly by the popular vote. 
Such a proposition would tend to make the 
Government a consolidated democracy, which 
would as surely lapse into a consolidated despot- 
ism under the rule of some great military chief- 
tain, or of some representative of sectional in- 
terest overriding State authority and State indi- 
viduality. To preserve, as I have heretofore 
endeavored to show. State individuality in ac- 
cordance with national unity, was the great 
purpose and labor of the fathers. Such an 
amendment, in my opinion, would sooner or 
later overthrow the first, and convert the second 
into an unmitigated despotism. 

Before closing I am constrained to notice a 
statement made the other day by my colleague 
from the fourth district, [Mr. Rogeks,] so aptly 
designated yesterday by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Scofiei.d] as the "leaderof 
the Opposition," who, I regret, is not now in his 
seat, when deliveringhis very able speech upon 
the constitutional amendment, then before the 
House, which, unexplained, places our State in 
a false position, which I believe he did not intend. 
He stated that New Jersey "had sent no colored 
troops to the war." It is true that New Jersey 
sent no organized colored troops to the field, and 
for a reason well known to my friend and to 
the people of our State, but she did send many 
gallant negro soldiers — not a few of them from 
my own town — who were obliged to secure ad- 
mission in organizations in Pennsylvania and 
Rhode Island. They fought well, and deserve 
the commendation of their State and country. 
Some of them found an honorable death, and 
to-day their bones bleach on the plains of Lou- 
isiana or lie buried in the bloody trenches of 
Petersburg and Richmond. 

Mr. Speaker, New Jersey has never faltered, 
in any regard, in her obligations to the Gov- 
ernment nor in her devotion to the Union. Her 
sons, imbibing their patriotism upon the gory 
fields of the Revolution, sent forth men and 
money freely as her waters course to the ocean. 
The seventy-nine thousand five hundred and 
eleven soldiers and sailors — besides many fur- 
nished to adjoining States — with the millions 
of her treasure expended in the war, furnish 
the most fitting reply to those who malign her 
patriotism or impugn her loyalty. Her sons 
fell on every field, the foremost in the fight, 
and were ever counted the bravest of the brave. 
She gave such men as Kearney, Bayard, the 
Taylors, Allen, Tucker, Ryerson, Zabriskei. 
Janeway, Hatch, Vredenburgh, Haines, and 
Arrowsmith, with thousands of other braves, 
counting them a fitting sacrifice to place upon 
the altar of liberty, and she cherishes their 
memories as a priceless heritage. 

Mr. Speaker, the late gigantic rebellion hav- 
ing been subdued and the armies thereof utterly 
routed and dispersed, it is but natural that our 
people should turn with beaming eyes and grate- 
ful laearts to the heroic Union soldiers and sail- 



8 



ors who have so nobly periled their all in defense 
of their country. Never shall their great deeds 
be forgotten. Forever shall the memory of our 
gallant dead be embalmed in the hearts of the 
living. On the banks of many a southern river ; 
under the spreading foliage of many a southern 
forest tree ; on the hillsides and in the valleys 
of the South are the tensof thousands of those 
grassy mounds which mark the last resting- 
places of the noble Union dead. In many a 
northern home the widow and the orphan, the 
brother and the sister, the bereaved father and 
the disconsolate mother, await the. footfall on 
the step without, that so often in the past, had 
been the sweetest music to their ears, but await 
it in vain. Never more on this earth shall the 
form of that brave boy who proudly stepped from 
his father's door to take his place in the Union 
column as it filed past, be clasped again to that 
father' s heart. Never more shall a mother" s kiss 
be pressed upon his brow as he sleeps in his little 
cot, inthehumblechamberoftheoldhomestead: 

" He has fought his last fight, he has won his last 
battle, 
No sound shall awake him to glory again." 

But in the grateful heart of a redeemed nation 
should his memory and the memory of his glo- 
rious death be enshrined as long as our mount- 
ains lift their heads to the heavens and our 
rivers bear the waters of the continent to the 
sea. Let it be our chiefest care to see that the 
survivors of this momentous and appalling strife 
be the objects of a nation's solicitude and a na- 
tion's care. Failing in not only our duty but 
our gratitude to these men, we fail in one of the 
noblest attributes of a nation — that sovereign 



attribute of justice to those who have helped to 
save it from destruction. And this justice in- 
cludes the right of these men to equal bounties 
and equal pay as well as the right when incapaci- 
tated Ijy sickness or wounds from earning "their 
daily bread to a comfortable maintenance from 
the Government. Thus, fulfilling all our duties, 
protecting all who need pi-otection, fostering 
the weak, and giving the strong every possible 
opportunity to build up the waste places of the 
land, let us so conduct our aifairs as not only 
to attract to our nation the admiring eyes of the 
world at large, but to draw down upon it the 
approving smile of iUmighty God. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, unmindful of all con- 
sequences to ourselves, individually, but im- 
pressed with our responsibility to all mankind, 
casting oar vision beyond the present and into 
the far distant future, let us endeavor to rees- 
tablish this Government upon the endui-ingjmn- 
ciple of ''equal and exact justice to all men," 
and to lay its foundations deep and broad upon 
the eternal rock of liberty and a perpetual 
Union. So shall our beloved country, healed 
of her wounds, and disinthralled from the en- 
chantment which has bound her for a hundred 
years, spring into a new existence, to exceed 
in grandeur and greatness the wildest visions of 
the patriot fathers, and her banner, planted high 
upon the everlasting hills of truth and justice, 
and illuminated by the sun of freedom, shall be- 
come a beacon to the oppressed children of men 
who shall come hitherward and find a refuge 
and a heritage for themselves and their chil- 
dren, and their*children's children, till time 
shall be no more. 



Printed at the Congressional Globe Office. 



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